Thoughts on Cambodia 1975-1982 by Michael Vickery?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5089720

Ye see, I've been reading a book called "Cambodia 1975-1982" by Michael Vickery (you can find its pdf), and needless to say, its goal is to:

prove{s} that the truth {of 'Democratic Kampuchea'} was much more complex than the situation as portrayed by anti-Communist Western media, by pro-revolutionary sympathizers, or by the regime itself, and would dishearten all three of those groups.

Specifically, D.K Cambodia was split between 2 main power-holding sections, East Zone and Northwest (Viet-allied and gradualist) and Southwest (Anti-Viet, chauvinist), and the Southwest one led by Pol Pot won and purged the rest...

1975-1977 wasn't that bad (more or less attempted economic recovery), but 1977-1979 was Pol Pot's purge time we all know and hate...

Besides that, it talks of People's Republic of Kampuchea from 1979-1982...

I reached this section over here:

Children's work in the old days though was accompanied by much fun and play, as the elephant dung story clearly indicates; and the suppression of fun and play is one of the things which distinguished DK invidiously from pre-revolutionary Cambodia.

Among the comments accompanying the children's drawings was the account of a boy who had worked minding water buffalo, a typical children's chore in Cambodia. He told of being punished twice in one day, once for allowing the animal to run away, also typical, but once for laughing and joking while at work, which for Cambodia was entirely aberrant.

Thoughts on this book, or just on D.K Cambodia?